8/30/07

All is going so fast. We had a property inspection done on the new house (look! I've started calling it "the new house" instead of "the-house-we-might-be-moving-into-if-everything-works-out." ) Alas, a high level of radon was detected, but it seems the Seller is a good guy and will put in a mitigation system at his expense. There were a few other little things the inspector found - a loose shingle here, a tiny crack in a window there -- but on the whole, the house was in beautiful shape. We are speeding toward the projected closing date, which will be "no later than November 26."

On this end, before we even listed with a realtor, some people who heard about our houses going on the market showed up with an interest in one or possibly both our houses, as they were thinking their parents might use one of the houses as a retirement home. That would have been too good to be true, but they did make an offer on the rental house that used to be my mother's, and we are working out terms of the deal. I don't even know how I feel about this anymore. The extreme grief I felt a couple of weeks ago has certainly dissipated....2 weeks ago I cried if I even thought of a single shrub I'd planted here. Now I'm walking around our old house saying to myself, "I never liked old houses that much anyway! Thank God I won't have to see those corny old cornices anymore! And I hate those wide plank boards with the gaps between them!" And as for selling the house I inherited from my mother....well, it's been rented for eight years, and this doesn't feel very different, except that I'll miss the rent. And though we've had great tenants on the whole, I won't miss being a landlord.

All this upheaval began because we were looking for a way for me to have more space for Japanese stencil dyeing...oh yeah, that's what this blog is supposedly about! I almost forgot!  I've been so swept up in this house-buying and house-selling business that I can hardly think of anything else. And funny the way the mind works...now that I have a spacious studio in sight, I have convinced myself that I can't work in the cramped conditions of our current house anymore. Oh, I'm working, allright, as I have the show season just ahead, but the lack of space, which I tolerated for years, suddenly is driving me crazy, now that the end is in sight.